“Films allow us to see ourselves—to see who we've been, how we've evolved. There may be things we don't like to see about ourselves in the past. [But] we don't really have a chance of knowing where we're going unless we know where the hell we've been.”

-- Martin Scorsese, “100 Years of Warner Bros.,” episode 3

Amen. It's why retrofitting past artifacts to current cultural values is a sin to me. (Recent example: scrubbing the n-word from “The French Connection.”) It's not only white-washing history, it's an insult to all the people who fought and sacrificed to get us where we are now. It's pretending their great work wasn't even necessary.